The Call of the ‘Wild’ on the Pacific Crest Trail

The Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile hiking and equestrian trail that reaches from Mexico to Canada, has been called the Appalachian Trail of the West Coast. But that description does it a disservice, for the Pacific trail is longer, wilder, more punishing and also grander than its East Coast cousin.

Starting in desert chaparral near the Mexican border, the route climbs (and climbs some more) along the spine of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges as it pushes relentlessly northward. It crosses the western arm of the Mojave Desert. It traverses the lonesome high country of Sequoia National Park in California and Yosemite’s magazine-cover Tuolumne Meadows. It winds through stately Oregon forests near Crater Lake National Park and it skirts along the shoulders of volcanoes like Mount Rainier in Washington. Along the way, backpack-freighted hikers descend nearly to sea level (at the Columbia River) and tramp higher than 13,000 feet (at Forester Pass in the Sierra).

In the spring of 1995, a young Ms. Strayed hit the trail to lose her problems and find herself. She had a lot to shake off. Ravaged by the loss of her mother four years previous and freshly divorced, she was as adrift as the new surname she had chosen. With a volume of Adrienne Rich poems in her leaden pack and the still-fresh bruise of a heroin needle on her leg, she began trudging north alone on the trail, starting on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Uncertain how long she would last or what she would find, she was determined to push ahead. (Ms. Strayed completed about half of the entire trail over several months, skipping several sections either by plan or by circumstance.)

Since “Wild” has appeared, the trail has beckoned to many women who, like Ms. Strayed, needed a change in their lives and believed they might find it on this challenging, sometimes lonely route, seeking the combination of “promise and mystery” that Ms. Strayed described so enticingly.

One of these is Linda Blaney, 53, a self-described “very burned out” blackjack dealer at the Wynn Las Vegas and Encore resort. She picked up “Wild” and felt an almost immediate connection to the author.

“She had relationship issues, and I was in the same boat,” Ms. Blaney said in a recent phone interview. “I couldn’t stay married, have been married and divorced three times. And she talks about her mother ... and we have similarities in that area.”

Ms. Blaney, who had day-hiked avidly but had not done much more than that, read of Ms. Strayed’s huge backpack (in the book the author nicknames it “Monster”) and her ill-fitting shoes and thought to herself: “If this woman can do this, any woman can do this. I can do this.”

Last spring, after months of preparation, she took time off from work to tackle the trail’s southernmost stretch, solo.

“I needed to find something in me,” Ms. Blaney said of her three-week trek. “I just started right at the Mexican border, at Campo. And I walked 266 miles. I won’t lie: I wanted to walk 274. But my blisters at the end were horrible.”

From her home in Portland, Ore., Ms. Strayed said that Ms. Blaney’s story has become a familiar one in her in-box, explaining that “maybe approaching 1,000 people” have e-mailed her and said, “I have read ‘Wild’ and you have inspired me to do a hike.”

But don’t picture High Sierra passes clotted with distraught heroin addicts staggering toward Canada on five-month walkabouts. The Wild Effect, as it’s been called, has been large but also nuanced, according to Jack Haskel, a trail information specialist for the nonprofit Pacific Crest Trail Association, which works with the Forest Service to manage the trail and provide permits for long-distance hikers.

“My general impression is that ‘Wild,’ so far at least, is translating into people doing more weeklong backpacking trips and weekend backpacking trips,” he said in an e-mail. “I’ve encountered five to six long-distance hikers inspired by ‘Wild,’ and a lot more shorter section hikers.”

The Pacific Crest Trail saw a record number of long-distance hikers this year, with permits issued for 1,044 “thru-hikers” (people headed all the way from Mexico to Canada) and 822 more permits for people hiking 500 miles or more, the trail association said. The trail’s popularity has been growing annually for several years, however, and this year’s record is likely due to several reasons, not just “Wild,” Mr. Haskel said. (On average, fewer than half of those requesting thru-hiker permits actually complete the hike, he said.)

Many “Wild” hikers seem to be following Ms. Strayed herself: biting off smaller portions of the mammoth trail, a grueling, often-spectacular route with switchbacks up and down some of the highest real estate in California, Oregon and Washington. The trek usually takes thru-hikers five months, hoofing more than 17 miles a day while bent beneath an anvil pack.

“Wild” has helped many women “see that it really wasn’t dangerous for them to be out there,” said Leigh Swansborough, an addictions specialist who, with her friend Martin Mondia, recorded video interviews this summer with women on the John Muir Trail in California for Mr. Mondia’s college project on the psychology of female backpackers. (The 211-mile John Muir Trail shares the Pacific trail route for much of its length.)

“Cheryl’s book really made it possible and believable for women to see that doing something out of their comfort zone, or very big, was possible,” Ms. Swansborough, 42, said. “Women aren’t really taught that in society.”

She added that most women the two interviewed had no background in the outdoors. (Some of their videos can be seen at Pathgryndr.com.)

Ms. Swansborough could have been talking about Connie Seré.

“I remember sitting across from my mom and she just went through every ridiculous scenario: that I could get eaten by a bear, attacked by a strange man, break my ankle and be unable to start my fellowship,” Ms. Seré, 27, said of the day when she told her mother she planned to do a solo hike.

Ms. Seré, who lives in Houston, is not a particularly lost person, and “not at all” outdoorsy, she said. But when she picked up Ms. Strayed’s book in the summer of 2012, she loved it.

“I appreciated her honesty about her failings and about the struggles that she dealt with, and the courage that she showed in stepping out of a dark place,” she said.

With her summer free before starting a postgraduate fellowship, Ms. Seré flew to Bend, Ore., in mid-August. A “trail angel,” or volunteer who helps out hikers, picked her up and drove her to a trailhead to start a 200-mile hike north to the Columbia River. (She ended up hiking 150, after an unplanned detour and a helpful ride from strangers.)

“It was excruciating, and frightening, and exhilarating, and empowering, and sublime at points, and my feet are still recovering,” she recalled of her trip.

The book hasn’t been a touchstone for women alone.

“At least half of my fan mail is from men,” Ms. Strayed said. After all, much of “Wild” is universal. “One strand of this story doesn’t have to do with the wilderness at all,” she said. “It’s grief and loss and how to bear what we cannot bear.”

Graham Harris is one of those men. Mr. Harris, 23, enjoyed day-hiking around Southern California but had not been on many backpacking trips. In May 2012 he and his girlfriend were hiking in Laguna.

“We came across the dead body of someone I had grown up with,” he recalled. “It was a suicide.”

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“It was a sad, pretty dismal few months,” he said. “I didn’t really know how to cope with that.”

Last fall, during his senior year at the University of Southern California, his best friend and hiking buddy told him to pick up “Wild.”

“I went and got the book and remember opening up the first couple of pages and looking at the map of the trail, this line going up the coast, and thinking, ‘Wow ... I want to do that,’ ” he said. Ms. Strayed’s story of pushing through pain motivated him at a time he needed help.

“I do partially credit reading ‘Wild’ with helping to bring me back to being excited about going out hiking and going out into nature again,” he said.

As Mr. Harris spoke, he had just laid out his gear for a three-day outing on the Pacific Crest Trail with the Sierra Club.

“I’m extremely excited,” he said. “This will be my first time.”

On his calendar for next summer: the entire John Muir Trail.

The Wild Effect may be just beginning. More readers are finding the book, which appeared in paperback in March. And a film adaptation of “Wild” starring Reese Witherspoon, being filmed now in Oregon, promises to put the story, and the trail, before an even larger national audience.

Some trail observers predicted that the Pacific Crest Trail will likely experience its version of “the Bryson bump,” a jump in hikers who attempt the whole trail similar to the surge in popularity the Appalachian Trail experienced after Bill Bryson’s best-selling 1998 book, “A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.” And the number of Americans on the El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage hike through Spain surged 200 percent in the year after it was featured in the 2011 movie “The Way” starring Martin Sheen, a tourism official said.

“The ‘Wild Effect,’ I think, is going to be long-term,” Mr. Haskel said.

Donna Saufley is a former board member of the Pacific Crest Trail Association who with her husband, Jeff, runs Hiker Heaven, a no-charge hostel in Agua Dulce, Calif., that is famous among thru-hikers.

“I’m grateful for the awareness that the book has created about the trail,” Ms. Saufley said. “People don’t care about what they don’t know about. The trail needs, and wilderness needs, as much support as it can get. And if it gets people outdoors and moving and exploring, that’s very positive.”

Some trail advocates do worry that a surge of popularity could contribute to it being loved to death if newcomers do not travel thoughtfully: living lightly on the land, being careful with fire, moving respectfully through small trailside communities.

Ms. Saufley said she also feared that people will mistakenly use “Wild” as a guidebook. Ms. Strayed certainly made a lot of rookie gaffes. She put unleaded fuel into her white-gas cooking stove, rendering it useless. She became disoriented and wandered down side roads. Her boots did not fit. She lost one down a mountainside, and in a fury chucked the other after it. She was, quite literally, a tenderfoot.

“Her book is really how not to do it,” Ms. Saufley said. “She was lucky that she didn’t run into trouble.”

She added, “The last thing we need is a bunch of ill-prepared people who aren’t thinking clearly and who are trying to find themselves.”

Ms. Strayed pointed out that “Wild” is a memoir, not a Baedeker. Moreover, “Most of the people who have been snobbish about my experience made these same mistakes when they started,” she said. “And I paid for my mistakes.”

“I’ve given people permission; that you do not have to be an expert to walk into the woods,” she said, adding that some backcountry critics are elitists who think there is just one way to do things: their way.

“There’s a phrase used among long-distance backpackers, and it’s ‘hike your own hike,’ ” Ms. Strayed said. “Some people are going to be doing 40 miles a day and carrying 8 pounds on their back, and some are going to be carrying 80 pounds and barely making 10 miles a day.”

The important thing is getting out there however you can, she said.

Penny Sonnier, 47, aims to be part of that next wave. In 2012 Mrs. Sonnier, a homemaker and artist in Lafayette, La., happened to see Ms. Strayed on “Super Soul Sunday” on the Oprah Winfrey Network and was waiting when Target opened its doors the next morning to buy her copy of “Wild.” She devoured it. Today her book is flecked with colored Post-it notes marking passages that meant a lot to her.

“She had the courage at 26 to do what I wish I had done, which was take care of herself, doing whatever she had to do,” said Mrs. Sonnier, adding that in the past she had battled with alcohol and depression. “I went from Penny the kid to Penny the mother of two. I never got to live as Penny the individual.”

In early November Mrs. Sonnier will strike out for Oregon to stay with outdoor-savvy friends and do some initial hiking along the trail around Odell Lake in west-central Oregon.

“With the blessing of my family, thank God, I’m going,” she said. “We have no money. I’m selling some things I own so I can go.”

Mrs. Sonnier said she knew that her timing was bad, with cold weather approaching, and that she had much to learn.

“If I only walk five miles — guess what? — I’m still a success for having the courage to try,” she said. “I want to experience the world as Penny, not as a wife, as a daughter, as a mother. I need to understand me, at all costs.”

And in time?

Mrs. Sonnier did not hesitate.

“I’d like to see it all,” she said of the trail.

A version of this article appears in print on October 20, 2013, on Page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Call of the ‘Wild’. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe